5 Tips To Increase Student Group Sponsorship

Many student groups (SGs) rely on sponsorship and donations to help fund their initiatives.

It’s important to note that without the generosity and support of donors, there would be significantly fewer opportunities for students to gain out-of-classroom experiences.

The aim of this article is to share some of the things I’ve learned from my experience with student groups and help student executives secure the funding they need to continue delivering value to their constituents.

1. Find the right contact person

Think about the people you are trying to contact and their roles. Depending on the size of the company, you might be able to find their name (and possibly their email) on the company website. If that’s not the case, utilize LinkedIn (make sure your LinkedIn profile is good first).

Most executives can be found on LinkedIn. If you don’t know the name of the person to contact, look at the listed employees through the company’s LinkedIn page.

TIP: Many large companies have employees with the words “talent” or “campus” in their title. Use the Boolean search to find the people that match those words in their title.

2. Think of your role as business development

If the nature of your role is to bring in sponsorship dollars then you are doing something similar to business development. In other words, you are selling the value of your SG to other businesses in order to bring in revenues.

You should truly believe in your SG and that you can bring value to the sponsor. With this in mind, it becomes easier to explain to the company the benefits of partnering with you.

TIP: If a sponsor declines your sponsorship request, offer to give them 2 free tickets so that they can see how great your event is and potentially sponsor the next edition. They will be more inclined to partner with your SG next time if you give them something for free and they see the value.

3. Ask for monetary and in-kind sponsorship requests

Monetary forms of sponsorship (in other words, cash) is often the first thing that comes to mind when requesting sponsorship. It’s completely normal considering the purchasing power and freedom that cash gives you.

However, there is another form of sponsorship called in-kind sponsorship, where the sponsor agrees to provide goods or services instead of cash. An example of where this can be useful is when you are looking for cash to cover the cost of goodie bags for attendees of your event. If the sponsor seems hesitant or declines your request for cash, ask if they would be willing to provide branded items instead. They would be able to choose between giving items they have in inventory or purchasing them for you.

4. Know your worth

In business, one party pays another party for 2 reasons:

• You save them time/cost/headaches or;
• You are generating revenue for them

These are not always direct results of sponsorship, but the true motive of sponsorship lies in either of those reasons.

For example, a company places its logo courtside of a basketball court for an NBA game. Every time the camera pans across the court, over 1M viewers will see your logo. This creates immense brand awareness and ultimately more revenue for the company.

Now a student conference does not bring in the same amount of eyeballs, but the logic still applies. Although you have fewer viewers if you offer opportunities for participation between attendees and the sponsor you will still be able to create a strong impression.

An example of how sponsoring saves time is if a recruiter gets to meet students at an event. After a few hours at your event, this recruiter will probably have found a few interesting candidates. Therefore, they won’t have to spend as much time sifting through CVs because they already identified promising candidates.

Know the value that your specific student groups bring. There are countless student groups/student-run events. Why should they pick yours?

5. Tailor your sponsorship proposal

The common way student groups approach sponsorship is that they have a sponsorship package that contains a lot of text about the SG or the event you are organizing and 3 tiers at different price points.

The downside of this model is that you are “forcing” a company to choose from 3 options without knowing if that’s what they want or if it solves their problems. It is also very generic and does not make the potential sponsor feel like they are any different than the hundreds of other companies you have reached out to.

An alternate option would be to send an info package that contains information about the SG and the event, statistics about past editions (engagement rates, attendance rates…), expected numbers for the upcoming edition, a list of all the visibility opportunities (optional) and an invitation to further discuss over coffee or a call.

When you have the meeting with the company representative, your aim will be to learn more about their challenges and objectives. After the meeting, you can create a proposal that is tailored to them and that solves their problem or helps them reach their objective. Once the proposal is made, set up another meeting to present the tailored proposal and stand out from the rest by showing that you listened.

By understanding your target, what they want, and showing them how you can help them get there, you will find it easier to secure sponsorships.

Originally published at https://medium.com on June 18, 2019.